Yet Another Post Season II Finale
by Jayce Gish
Summary: I'm jumping on the Post Season II Finale bandwagon; Martha sets up Alexis to have Gina de-throwned from the Hamptons. Ah, Rick who? He doesn't stand a chance against the women in his life. Feedback needed, please.
1. Chapter 1: He Took Who? He Took What?

CHAPTER 1

Martha Rogers wasted no time. From the moment she had hung up on her son, she was immediately dialing her granddaughter. "Come on," she urged her phone, "this is important. . ."

"Hello?" Martha smiled, and gave a slight "hallelujah" toward the heavens. The voice that answered her call was none other than her redheaded granddaughter, Alexis Castle, presently in residence at a summer extended study program for high school students held on the campus of Princeton.

"Alexis, Grams here. Are you sitting down?"

"No, I'm walking in between my class," she responded, noting that something must be up. Her grandmother was seldom home, let alone sober, at 3:00 - in the afternoon, no less. Not to mention that she was telephoning, knowing that Alexis was so diligent about turning off her phone during classes or while studying. Martha took a moment to acknowledge the fact that Alexis was the true rebel of the family: diligent, organized, and mature. Obviously, there was something way back in her Mother's DNA that was amiss from the genes shared by Martha and her son, famed mystery novelist and toddler-adolescent, Richard Castle. And, based on the usual behavior of Meredith, the reliability gene had skipped her generation and was firmly deposited in Alexis' chemical make-up.

Alexis' voice returned Martha to the conversation. "Okay, Gram, what's up?"

"You'd better sit down."

Alexis did not like how her grandmother was trying to prepare her for what could be bad news. Of course, with Martha, "bad news" could cover anything from a nuclear war to a shortage of ready chilled chablis in the ice box. Still, Alexis decided to play along with her fellow redhead. She put down her back pack under a large oak tree and sat down so her back was against the trunk. "Okay, I'm sitting. What is it?"

Martha paused for dramatic effect (of course, everything that Martha said contained a maximum of "dramatic effect", so Alexis was expecting no less). "I finally heard from your father about an hour ago."

Alexis smiled. "I've been leaving him voice messages for the better part of two weeks, ever since he dropped me off. I figured that he as, well, occupied with working on his book, not to mention with his, how did he put it, his "guest for possibly a very long weekend"? So, they finally came up for air?"

Martha looked at the phone like it had grown a second head and was spouting the wisdom of Proust. "'Came up for air'? Alexis, what are you talking about? You knew about your father's guest?"

Alexis smiled. "Well, not exactly, but he told me that he had invited someone "special", so I knew it had to be Detective Beckett. Not that Dad ever spoke her name out loud. Gosh, it certainly took them long enough to figure it out. I maybe should be a little jealous, but I did choose this program over spending Memorial Day in The Hamptons with him, so I guess that I'm really quite happy for them both. . ."

There was a sharp whistle from Martha's end of the telephone. It immediately stopped Alexis in her tracks.

"What did I say?"

"Alexis, you Dad didn't take Kate Beckett. He took Gina."

The next sharp noise was from the impact of the iPhone to the dirt as Alexis dropped it at the same moment she choose to scream. Her Dad hated Gina . . didn't he? Alexis knew that she hated Gina, ergo, her Dad must hate Gina also, since Castle and Little Castle agreed at least 98% of the time. Alexis quickly reached for the phone, picked it up, dusted it off, and tried to speak. Unfortunately, no sound was forthcoming from Alexis' vocal chords.

Martha seemed to understand. "Just let the energy surrounding you flow. Your senses will recover in a moment. I know, I thought he was taking Kate, also. I have no idea what happened, but your Dad called me to let me know that he had just tossed her out bodily from his downstairs office, was locking himself in to finish the book in order to get Gina out of his life as quickly as humanly possible, and, if Gina happened to call me with a tall tale of the cottage being on fire and to alert him, that I was NOT to convey any messages from Gina to him."

"Dad hates Gina." Alexis was very confused. She had previously joked that when she believed her father and Kate Beckett would be spending a romantic long weekend together that perhaps both Rick Castle and Alexis Castle might be getting lucky. Of course, her Dad was rather upset at the teenager's weak joke. If he had already been planning to spend it with Gina . . . Alexis tried to put that mental picture out of her head. Oh, so NOT a Kodak moment. Ewww. "Gram. Dad does hate Gina, doesn't he?"

"Oh, don't I know." Martha had tried to tell her son that he had no business marrying Gina, but Rick had refused to listen to her. He wanted a mother for his little girl; but he choose the one woman in all of New York City that lacked so much as a single maternal bone in her entire body. Gina was his publisher, a single minded career woman, and all that she had wanted was Richard Castle for arm candy and a steady income of royalties as he turned out a growing library of best selling novels. Not to mention almost eight years of monthly alimony payments: That marriage, which was Rick Castle's second and God knows what number for Gina, had lasted almost an entire four months. Alexis had been the first immediate discard. In a way, it had been his concern with his young daughter that carried Rick through those first difficult days.

Martha couldn't help but notice that she needed another drink whenever Gina's name was mentioned. "Alexis, why are you stating the obvious? Of course your Dad hates Gina. That is what unites all Castles - hatred of your father's second wife."

"Gram, I'm confused. What happened to Detective Beckett?"

"Ah, that I don't know. But someone needs to find out," suggested Martha.

Alexis suddenly realized the reason behind Martha's phone call. "You want me to telephone Detective Beckett and snoop?"

"Now, Alexis, that would be rude. However, you could inquire . . ."

Alexis shook her head and grinned. "So, in other words, Dad isn't picking up his cell phone or returning the calls you're leaving on the cottage home phone?"

"You're such a smart girl. We raised you well."

Alexis restrained from rolling her eyes. "Okay, Gram, what do you want me to do?"

"Well, I have an idea. . ."


	2. Chapter 2: Meanwhile Back at the Cottage

CHAPTER 2

Alexis thought for almost two minutes about the outline of the course of action suggested by her grandmother. How else to extricate her father, the famed crime novelist and intrepid eternal adolescent Richard Castle, from the situation he had trapped himself into. Alexis shook her head, her long strawberry blonde hair shimmering in the afternoon early summer sunlight. Alexis had been so sure that her Dad had invited his muse and her friend, New York Police Department's Detective Katherine Beckett. Exactly how and when Kate had been replaced with the dreaded and (frankly) hated Gina Cowell, her ex-stepmother and her father's second ex-wife, had yet to be unraveled; all that Alexis knew was that her father had, once again, screwed up royally, and that the dynamic team of Martha Rogers and Alexis Castle were once again needed to don their armor, mount their chargers, and ride into the fray to extricate Richard Castle from yet another disaster completely of his own making.

"Dad, what the hell did you do this time," Alexis wondered, and tried to directly dial the private family-only phone of their summer cottage in the Hamptons. Alexis listened as the line continued to ring without a pick-up. She tried the number again, and then for a third time. Apparently, her grandmother was right: Her Dad was no longer accepting any telephone calls to their summer house, now that he had made what he considered his sole contact with the outer world.

Alexis stomped her feet. Her father may have shut out the rest of the Earth, but he had never knowingly prevented contact from his daughter. Maybe Gina had disconnected the phones. Based on what Gram had said, her father had missed yet another deadline for his latest Nikki Heat novel, and until he had completed this final draft of the manuscript for "Naked Heat", Rick Castle was sentenced to serve under the relentless supervision of Gina.

Deciding to continue to perform her own due diligence, Alexis started to dial the cottage number for the fourth time, but stopped halfway through punching the number into her iPhone's keypad. No, I know I'm dialing it correctly, she realized, and sat back down under the tree to consider her options, shifting her position to maximize the amount of shade she could receive in in order to protect her pale skin from the summer sun.

Alexis reached into her sack and pulled out a spiral notebook and a pen. She opened the notebook to a random blank ruled page, uncapped a felt tip, and drew a thick dividing line straight down the middle of the page. She smiled, as she realized that it was Kate Beckett who had once told her about her own system of listing the pros and cons of any situation, and then reviewing both columns in their entirety before deciding on a course of action. The fact that this was the origin of the murder board used by the Homicide Department of the NYPD had been carefully omitted by Kate. The slanted Castle smirk was evident on Alexis' face as she thought of the irony of applying Kate's methodology to the present dilemma.

To the left of the line, Alexis wrote "Pro-Gina" as a heading, and on the right side of the line she wrote "Death To Gina". There, both precise and concise. The kind of confrontation that her Gram most appreciated, simple black and white, while her father delighted in exploring all of the shades of grey of any situation. As to this particular difficulty, Alexis was realizing that she preferred a middle ground to the two extremes. Still, the application was required to be completed in full in order to produce the desired result: No Gina to remain in residence with her father for a moment longer than absolutely necessary.

"Dad, never let it be said that you made everything easy," Alexis muttered to herself, and then drew a final thick outline of a large square in the bottom right corner of the page. This was Alexis' addition to Kate's plotting of the evidence and facts: A constant reminder of the desired outcome, clearly evident on the page so it was never lost as the objective of the exercise. This square she labeled "Kate", and only then did Alexis feel that the framing of her game plan was complete.

Now, all she needed to do was recall her Grandmother's suggestions, write them down, add her own details, and the plan would be off and running.

For her part, Gina was determined that nothing, absolutely nothing, would hamper Rick Castle's creativity for the next hours, the next days, and, if necessary, the next three months. All of the phones had been unplugged; Gina had arranged to have all of Castle's mail held at the local post office until she herself made a weekly pick-up; and, just to prove that she meant business, Gina had personally locked up every drop of alcohol so there would be no time lost to any spontaneous partying with neighbors who just "happened" to be strolling down the beach and may have spotted Castle through the window as he worked in his office. Gina wanted her meal ticket to write, to rewrite, and then for her to take his finalized manuscript back to civilization, back to New York City, for her examination and final requests for changes, all to be made back in her office in mid-Manhattan. Gina was not expecting "War and Peace": 250 pages was more than adequate, and she had, well, other younger male writers that she would rather spend her evenings with (especially since her ex- had informed her that he was insisting on separate bedrooms during the entirety of her stay with him). After all, Richard was only a few months away from turning 40 years old, and Gina had no intention of settling for any male of that "advanced" age; well, not as long as she still had her looks and figure. No matter that they were maintained by the generous alimony payments and royalties from his novels - she felt that she as entitled to a lifetime of pampering, despite the fact that their marriage had only last for a few months. Yes, Gina was determined to make a break for The Big Apple as soon as she could: Unlike her "ex", who was writing about a fictitious lover, Gina had a real life to get back to: Parties, dinners, new writers to discover, and more procedures from a vast arsenal of plastic surgeons, not to mention several young men who all wanted to join her in any available bed. Much more exciting than an evening of laser tag with one's teenage daughter and had-one-too-many ex-mother-in-law.

Gina gently tried the heavy wooden door that led to Castle's study one last time. It was locked from the inside. Apparently, Richard wanted her gone with equal passion as her desire to leave. Gina put her ear to the door, but was unable to hear any sounds of the keyboard being tapped. It didn't matter: It was happy hour somewhere locally, and Gina was determined to find a party. Castle wouldn't miss her, and she certainly wasn't about to invite him out when he needed to write.

Having made her decision, Gina grabbed her car keys and her purse, and exited out the front door.

Rick Castle had been waiting to hear the sound of the front door closing. Finally! He had the house to himself. Keeping the front door locked, he opened up two of the french doors located behind his writing desk that led out to the small deck directly to the rear of his office. He could hear the waves crashing to the shore in the distance, and an occasional bird call. Other than that, there was silence. So unlike New York City. No traffic, no sound of lines being memorized by his mother, no humming by his daughter as she listened to her iPod: It always took him a day or two to adjust to the quiet from the constant barrage of continual noise that was so normal for Manhattan.

It was a measure of his uneasiness with Gina that it had taken him this long to make the adjustment to the slower pace of East Hampton. He had made himself a promise that, once Gina had departed for the evening and was on her personal quest for a new bedmate for the night, that he would allow himself just ten minutes of "recess" before he would start his now-standard evening activity: no less than two hours of staring at the blank computer screen, then the typing of several paragraphs, of which he might retain two or three sentences, or maybe an entire paragraph, if he was lucky. He didn't try to fool himself: He needed to concentrate, for the sooner Gina was gone with his finalized outline of "Naked Heat", the sooner his life could be more relaxed.

Rick frowned. Unfortunately, Nikki Heat would constantly remind the author of his intended summer guest, Kate Beckett. It was Kate's absence that was causing most of the delay to his latest novel. And, unless he could overcome his feelings of how intensely he was missing Kate from his life, Gina would stay . . . and stay . . . and stay.

Richard Edgar Castle closed one of the opened french doors and concentrated on the screen saver now flashing across his laptop: "You . . .should. . .be . . .writing".

Castle signed. Once again, it was going to be a very long night.


End file.
